


You reached it before your time

by briath



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (tyelko; for reasons of religious guilt and anger), Alatrism, Ambiguity, Auditory Processing Issues but Elves, Confrontations, Family Issues, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jewellery as a Love Language, Maglor says FUCK the Valar, Music, Oaths and Promises, POV Changes, Panic Attack, Platonic Relationships, Post Losgar, Punching Things in Anger, Quenya Names, Religion, Self-Care Birds, discussions about abandoning your people, does The Woods count as a character, failing to address any of your issues adequately, i made vana do emotional labour i am so sorry love, negative self-talk, possibly disturbing dicussions of death (animal & human), the author trying to make their harp-feelings your problem, there's a snake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27356146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briath/pseuds/briath
Summary: Makalaurë goes into the woods to get away from the noise (& to produce some of his own).Tyelkormo is already there.
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maglor | Makalaurë
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	You reached it before your time

His father’s council has again begun to turn into a screaming match. Poor Maitimo is one of the few still sitting, his under-eye bags deep enough to fit all the guilt their father won’t concede to feel. Makalaurë feels sympathy towards his betrodden older brother, he truly does. It’s just not enough to make him stay in this tent. 

Their father had permitted only Curufinwë—and, after lengthy persuasion, Ambarussa—to sit out this meeting, yet none of their younger brothers showed. He cannot truly say he blames them; anything they had to say had already been said, at length, at varying volumes. No one has a plan to proceed that everyone will agree to, even if everyone has a plan. And an oath. This thing they share that binds them together now more than their familial ties do, almost. The subject of their father’s debate with Anta, a well-educated cook his father had spoken once of with respect, has turned towards the cultivation of grain in relation to land-ownership, the seasons, and—he thinks—some jabs about certain aspects of geography their father no longer looks kindly upon.

All that means though is that between his brother’s duty and his father’s distraction, no one is there to stop him from rising from his seat and exiting the large tent. His head is pounding. 

It is near enough dusk outside that activity of the day has begun to transform into activity of the night; Makalaurë’s fingers uncurl from his tense fist as if to reach out the music of their camp. The laughter of elves, the clattering of pots, the low hiss of barely-started fire, a clanging of swords. His own steps on the wet earth, the leather-creak of his boots. 

His eyes are open but the he can see the burning ships just as well; hear the screams and cracks of wood and the odd silence of the ocean like an overlay. Like a theme dictating the rhythm. He has been forbidden from making a song on the Burning, but already he feels the desperate itch in his fingers that tells him the order will not hold him for long.

Moryo had lent him his mandolin, seeing his brother so dejected after the loss of his favoured harp, and Tyelko had always been one willing to offer a flute or a drinking-song or a drum, but for songs and for his own heart Makalaurë has since long favoured the wire-strung lap harps and hammered psalters. The latter, of course, are unsuitable for war for they do not carry sound as far and are less handy to carry on horseback.

Sometimes he had used Findaráto’s harp instead of his own, with its softer strings and slow vibrations for its courtliness and agreeability. He wonders, as he walks half-dazed through the camp towards Requisitions, what had happened to it, and if someone will still play on it the elaborate melodic tunes his cousin had favoured. 

Their father had learned just enough to be able to appease his jealousy for knowledge and then left musical pursuits to Makalaurë. But Makalaurë suspects he will soon have much occasion to hear their forces’ hollow horns ill-treated by his out-of-practice father. He hopes someone will sympathize with him and provide ear coverings. Marching for battle will not incline him towards poor playing, especially should he be expected to play as well. 

And he will. That he has not yet been asked to means nothing; he does not play the harp for her love of war and yet he knows it will come to a love of it as swords are tools that learn to love blood, for nature is a thing of rearing. He shakes his head to cast off the gloomy thoughts. All the more reason for him to acquire a new harp as soon as possible.

The elf stationed before Requisitions gives him a scowl when he asks her for their best harp, and, ‘Any other decent instrument you have in there,’ but she obeys without speaking. He stands still in the spot, feeling unmoored in the wake of the great many sounds around him and too the thoughts inside of him which his mind flinches away from every time he stretches out a prodding thought towards it. 

Makalaurë, Kin-slayer, he is. 

The elf returns in a state of dishevelment he fails to notice, his vision narrowing in on what she has in her arms: A long pointed harp of the kind Findaráto had preferred but with metal strings and the attachments that produce the sonorous snarls that had given Nerdanel paroxysms when he first learned of them. The relief almost chokes him. ‘Is this the best you have?’

She crosses her arms and gives him a profoundly unimpressed look. ‘Lord, I understand you know your harps better than me, but I am the one who inventoried this whole thing.’ She jerks her chin at the big tent behind her. ‘Trust me when I say this is the only harp I could offer to a harpist of your skill without it being an insult.’ She pauses. ‘No offense.’

She does not sound it but Makalaurë does not care much either, busy as he is waving is hand at her in dismissal of her faulty understanding of his motivations. 

‘No, no, you mistake my meaning, this appears quite serviceable, yes, what is your name? I shall comment you for your service..’ and he wanders off, muttering to himself.

The elf left behind in front of Requisitions who is past the end of her shift and whose name is Quessien raises her eyebrows, first one, then the other for good measure because she can. He had not even touched the strings and yet known it to be decent enough for him? Hm. Must be the unknowable talent of the most capable harpist of the Noldor. Surely. The fact that he had forgotten he had asked her for more than just the harp equally must be put down to his professional joy, for one cannot think ill of their Lord. 

Of course, she had not reminded him. This spared her from having to reveal to him that they had no more instruments except ones even she would only recommend to the truly untrained. She sighs, and puts the matter out of her mind, returning to her important business of rolling a rock around with the tip of her shoe while waiting for her replacement to arrive, finally. 

Quite unlike Quessien, Makalaurë remains giddy as he makes his way past the line of hastily-erected earthen walls that surround their camp. Surely he will be able to convince Maitimo that this harp is unsuited for battle songs—it could hold its own alongside his voice or in an ensemble, but the sound would not carry over the din of battle. Let him fight their enemies with his sword and have his harp to comfort after. 

He enters into the grove of poplar trees that have been partially felled with one hand holding his harp and the other carefully holding his cloak up so its embroidered rim does not snag on any stray branches and tear. 

Without really aware of it he follows the sound of low ‘thud’s’ that seem to come from further ahead, shifting his grip so he can hold his dagger in his cloak-hand. He peers past the trunk of a young tree into a corridor cut into the grove by their woodsmen and finds his younger brother Tyelkormo there, tossing daggers at a large trunk cut off too far above the ground. His face is grim and his back gives off the appearance of being hunched despite the fact that his posture in such pursuits has always been disciplined, Makalaurë knows.

He looks around for Tyelko’s ever-present shadow, Huan the Dog, who had first bared his teeth at his Master in Alqualondë though Tyelko’s face, pale and terrible, had reflected nothing of it more than the bone-white of Huan’s teeth. He finds the large dog curled up underneath another tree safely out of reach of Tyelko’s blades, as accustomed as Makalaurë to their brother’s tunnel vision when working out his emotions. He pads over to the dog, letting the seam of his cloak fall back down so it swishes behind his feet. 

When he approaches the sleeping dog he pauses. Tyelko has made them all do this since he first got Huan as a young pup, but he can’t help still finding it awkward. He clears his throat. Huan’s eyes blink open. ‘May I sit next to you?’ He asks, as politely as he can. Huan moves his tail from where it had lain on the ground, clearing a space for Makalaurë. ‘Many thanks.’ 

The harp he lays down next to himself though he does not relinquish his grip on its pillar while he gets comfortable. Despite his slender frame the tree Huan has chosen to lie under is not a poplar tree but a young conifer of some sort, and its trunk is both narrow and uncomfortable, though it provides a comforting shade. Huan huffs, and Makalaurë pauses in his shifting, trying to interpret it. 

Gingerly, he rests half his weight against Huan, who huffs again, but makes no other moves. 

Feeling both more comfortable and warmer, Makalaurë unsheathes the harp from its woollen covering. It is not felted and thus will need to be replaced or supplemented; Makalaurë frowns at the thought of how it must have been transported. He may be able to convince Moryo to help with that—his brother has been beset by accountants since they made camp and so would either thank him for the distraction or throttle him for offering him more work. Perhaps it would be safest to try his own hand at it first and get one of the cloth-makers’ advice on rainproof fabrics. And he’ll want to get it embroidered, naturally. 

Thinking so, he begins happily humming, threading his light thoughts into the gloomy atmosphere with a giddy feeling of righting something. His free hand taps a slow, even rhythm into Huan’s fur. 

***

With each dagger Tyelkormo tosses into the old poplar trunk he forcibly distances a thought from his mind. _You abandoned Írissë._ Thonk. _The dying screams of elves do not sound any different from that of other creatures, after all._ Thonk. _You abandoned your Lord._ He grits his teeth. _Why did no one stop you._ He should have stopped himself. _You need to be reined in._ Stop. _In the future, nobody will stop you again._ He throws the last of the daggers he has on him. They are a set Curvo made him as thank-you gift the year his younger brother got married, made specifically for throwing and balanced beautifully. 

In the handle of each sits a dark opal, covered by some translucent globe to protect the soft gem. But the reminder of the love he bears his little brother cannot soothe him when his brother is here and so many he has loved so well are not. 

He walks towards the trunk, intending to pick up his daggers and return to the camp, when he hears Huan reach out to him. Ah, by the Horn, had he truly been so absorbed as to not notice his friend calling out to him? 

He fixes the daggers into their soft lamb cloth covering and turns around, already half-speaking an apology. Huan gives him an acknowledging chuff. 

What he sees only surprises him a little—he had of course noticed the presence, but it had not felt like a threat and Huan had not reacted either so he had dismissed it and focused on his thoughts. No, the surprise that comes to him is manifold: Firstly, that it is Laurë who came and not one of the others. Secondly, that Laurë had stayed and quite happily so, if the fact that he is half slumped into Huan and half slumped against a thin tree any indication. His brother enjoys attention of the appreciative kind, and so goes to some lengths to avoid causing the opposite reaction, yet this position is sure to result in dark stains on his reddish cloak. The last is the instrument he holds in his arms, black and slender. A new harp.

Tyelko walks over to him, throwing one arm around his brother’s narrow shoulders and one into the thick fur on Huan’s belly. Huan’s tail slaps the ground in joy. Makalaurë slaps at his chest without force, ‘be careful, you oaf,’ he hisses, ‘precious cargo.’ He lifts the harp slightly to demonstrate. 

‘It’s hard being this pretty, ‘tis true,’ he says with an exaggeratedly mournful tone, but he backs off nonetheless. Makalaurë emits a sigh so long and elaborate Tyelko rather suspects it to have been something of a song rather than an expression of longsuffering. ‘I wouldn’t want you to ruin my face, ‘Laure, think of the face our family would lose.’ He grins, but the joke falls flat between them still. 

Huan’s ears twitch; Tyelko rubs at one of them, gently. 

In the silence the bruises on Tyelko’s arm begin to throb again and with it the reminder of why he had put them there and what he had been ignoring: Even without wearing his Lord’s bangle (safely tucked away in the pouch on his belt lest his father, or worse, Curvo, ask any probing questions) he can hear the call of the horn. The irony of this—his own betrayal and the now truly insurmountable distance between them having not severed his bond with his Lord, but rendering it an impossible one to follow, is not lost on him. He would still rather not address it.

(The empty feeling on his arm, too, is his business: There had been many in Alqualondë who had tried to grab onto him, begging with their mouth and hands and eyes that he had not heeded. His brothers will not acknowledge their crime but Tyelkormo has seen more things die than they and he had only the surety of his devotion to redeem the act at all.) 

An oriole that Tyelko remembers had followed their group since they reached the shore calls a hesitant question at him. He gives her a response as polite as he can make it, and she flutters down with what Tyelko can feel is great effort even though they are partially shielded by the wind and settles on his shoulder. Huan yawns up at her. She is not fussed: He is far away from her and under Tyelko’s petting resembles a large carpet more than a predator.

He ignores his brother—who, it seems in turn, is ignoring him, balancing his harp at an odd angle on Huan’s flank and braced against his stomach and by all accounts tuning it with his third and fourth fingers. Tyelkormo may be Noldo and proud of it, but he has never chosen a Craft as his siblings have and his brother’s almost unconscious showing-off is removed from his own professional environment; one which required of him dedication and discipline, which, to his own shock, he found he had aplenty. 

The bird gives him her name which is something along the lines of the wild bees that come to eat the honey of red clovers and he praises the sound of it, quite sincerely. She ruffles her feathers, either because he has flattered her successfully, or because she is chilly. Or trying to get comfortable. He tries not to stereotype, but orioles are often concerned with their appearances. In his experience.  
He gives her an appropriate approximation of his own name.

His friends at the Hunt had found endless joy in his ability to make proper conversation with animals and his lack of ability to succeed at it with elves (or indeed, with… ah).

But birds will not talk except on their own terms and this one has been extremely polite and respectful of his boundaries and he feels she deserves his patience while she twitters through her request, which boils down to wanting to hear some of Laurë’s music.

He waits a bit while longer but as she seems to be continuing to contextualize her request and has since reached the second generation of her elders and their preference for romantic airs played on harps, he cuts her off, and promises to ask. 

In the meantime, Makalaurë and Huan had kept on with their businesses—Makalaurë had finished tuning his harp and was now trying runs to get used to the spacing between the strings. Huan had settled down into a light doze. 

Tyelko snaps him out of his focus but slightly. ‘’Laure,’ he says, ‘Brother-Musician.’ Makalaurë ignores the glow of pride in his chest from being addressed such and plays a quicker run with a grin to show he heard. The notes sing to him _TYEL-KOR-MO_ , they call out. Delighted, Makalaurë adds a thrill and one of the pearling sounds that had so frustrated his cousins. 

‘Laurë!’ 

‘I _am_ listening, my hasty brother,’ he retorts.

‘You were not listening enough to me and too much to your music.’ Makalaurë shrugs. He can’t very well deny that. 

‘This young lady would like to hear some of your songs. She has travelled with us for quite a while in hopes to hear some of your playing. She says she is acquainted with some—’ He turns his head to her. ‘Was it Albatrosses?’ 

The oriole was, as a matter of fact, far from being young, but she still hopped excitedly on his shoulders and confirmed that it was Albatrosses that had told her in the year of the Late Cold Flowering of Purple Drops, that—

‘They told her they had heard of your music from some kestrels that roosted in front of your home that you played music beautiful enough to match that of their own cousin and they knew of her’ The oriole’s ‘love for music and told her we were coming her way.’

She interrupts him with a small chirp. Tyelko chirps sagely back. 

‘She is asking politely.’ 

…

Tyelko has never witnessed Laure be quiet this long without running his hands over an instrument of some sort. He casts his mind back to see if he has said something he should not but nothing comes to him. 

..

Another minute passes; Makalaurë sits shock-still. Then, a gust of wind jostles the strings, and pulls him from his thoughts just enough.

‘I,’ he says, with an air of great dignity though his heart is pounding in his chest from the joy of being asked such a common question from such an uncommon source, ‘would be delighted. Never have I received such a polite and welcome request although I only apologize for my lack of familiarity with this instrument, I truly regret that I am unable to perform at my fullest and I wish you would impart towards your Albatross acquaintances my utmost thanks for their kind words; and yea, indeed, thus it will be said that Makalaurë Kanafinwë didst indeed--!’ And so on. 

Tyelkormo presses the hand with which he was not petting Huan deeply into the soil and prays to the Valar for patience. Then he remembers that they had never heeded even his mother’s doubtlessly more desperate prayers for the very same and that the only Vala who had ever Heard him likely listened no longer, or only in disgust. His guts twist. 

Huan’s tail brushes against the bruises on his arm and though that too pains him, it pains him in a way that untenses the coil of his nerves.  
He clings to the fact that he too would be much comforted by Laure’s music: Though he has no skill in participating ever had he liked the sense of movement and the images his brother evoked. 

The translation he gives to the oriole is not a direct one, although he suspects both her and his brother would quite happily cut out the middleman and chatter the night away were they able. But she understands the sense of it, a yes, and that Laure is deeply honoured and flattered by the request and that she is the first of her kind to ask such a thing and that it has come at an inopportune time for the harp is new and not of the finest quality. 

The oriole is, if possible, even more excited by that last thing, for, she explains, she will be able to hear his true skill on a subpar instrument all the better.

Tyelko resolves to reserve revealing her doubt of his skill for the next time he and Laure argue. 

He settles down on Huan’s other side, letting the oriole flutter about him with nervous energy until she decides to sit on the discarded harp cover closer to Makalaurë. Huan shifts his head onto his thigh. He loves that dog for more than his love of the giver, and for more than his gratefulness for Huan’s guarding presence, too. 

The woods seem to still around them as Makalaurë begins to pluck at the strings of his newly tuned harp. Even for an elf—even for a Noldo—his fingernails are long and sharp and for vanity’s sake decorated with small glinting red spinels. Their weight does not impede his brother’s hands as they hurry over the strings, plucking and dampening in turns. Tyelko closes his eyes and settles into the music, into his physical presence in this poor excuse for a forest, letting the chattering of the many creatures around him fall away. 

Makalaure begins singing then, an old lay Carnistir had favoured in childhood written from the point of view of a Teleri elleth as she begins to build the boat that she will be famous for. Tyelko opens his eyes lazily at the choice in topic, watching his brother’s face melt from joy to mellow concentration as he sings. The golden chains on his hands catch the late sunlight as he leisurely moves them over the strings. 

When he finishes, he raises his gaze from the strings to check that his audience is paying attention, and, having confirmed as much, he returns to an air he wrote watching Findekáno attempt to teach Írissë how to dance, something she had little interest in and that was yet required of all of them to learn. 

It is only the fact that he misses them that makes him play it slower and exchange some chords for their minor equivalents. 

When he concludes that piece, he remembers who had asked him for a performance and so he plays a song of spring and young birds he composed to a poem his aunt wrote many summers ago. The notes string together like the calls of hungry mouths and long, happy, elven nights. He plays and plays.

The oriole at some point flies over to Tyelko, explaining that she yet has business to attend to and to please thank the magpie-friend for his songs. Grinning at his brother’s proclivity for attracting new call-names, he promises he will pass on her praise and that she is welcome to stay near their camp for there will be surely more music. 

Makalaurë misses all of that, absorbed as he is. 

He does not need to see the strings to play so the dimming light does not pause him, but the encroaching cold slows him down enough he regains his awareness of his surroundings. Tyelko has, contrary to Makalaurë’s expectations, not gotten bored of sitting still and left him, and has remained where he saw him last, sharpening a stick into a stake with the aid of his teeth. 

Makalaurë rolls his eyes at seeing his brother’s childhood habit of neglecting metal blades re-emerge this far into his adulthood. 

‘Ah, Tyelko. You are still here?’

He grunts. 

‘Did the bird leave?’

Tyelko critically musters his work, raising the wood closer to his eyes, then, seemingly satisfied, puts it into his belt. ‘She had work to do. Said to tell you you lived up to her expectations.’

Something is fey and foreign in him, and Makalaurë’s instincts go on alert. ‘And you, brother? What did you think of it?’ 

It feels like the wrong move as soon as he’s said it—Tyelko does not shy away from handing out compliments but reacts poorly to feeling driven into conversational corners, and indeed his face hardens in response.

‘You judge your own skill better than I could,’ he says bitterly, refusing Makalaurë eye contact. 

Makalaurë stares down at him, squashing the swell of irritation. 

Tyelkormo sighs, belligerently. ‘You sung of the Burning of the ships, brother. Surely you must have noticed?’

Makalaurë gives no answer, for he had not. He had been trying to put what was on his minds in his hands, certainly, but he had not known it would be this. But, ‘Even such events must be put to song,’ he says, sure of himself. The vibrations of the soundboard still reverberate in his wrists. Now that Tyelko pointed it out to him, he can see the flames on water in his own mind again, but instead of their father’s cruel words he hears his own song. He still does not think he did anything wrong. He is a harpist; such is his love and his duty.

Tyelko laughs, a harsh, mocking sound. His teeth are bright and wooden splinters stick out from the corners of his mouth. ‘Love and duty, eh? I suppose you feel no responsibility for your choices, then? Think we’ve done everything just fine, following our father like,’ he snaps off a small branch, old, and it comes off with a clear ‘snap’, ‘good little sons do?’

This does affront him. Tyelkormo has no right to think of him as one who turns easily to murder or to leaving their home. And unlike his brother he had left his wife there. He cannot be judged.

‘I am speaking not of Valinor, Laurë. Did you bear our cousins so little love you would deny them even now?’

His own lines now well and truly crossed, Makalaurë snaps back, ‘And you would do well not to forget we have not killed our cousins! There is nothing stopping them from returning to Valinor. I understand you make sport of disagreeing with our family’s diplomatic choices, but try to refrain from letting your fondness for the wild-growing things replace your brain!’

He shouts over his brother’s disagreeing growls until he loses breath. 

Tyelko, not one to be outdone in a contest of anger, takes his chance to shout back, shaking but holding himself terribly still as if to conceal himself from an invisible danger. 

‘We left them alive but with the doom we left them. They will not be able to return!’

Makalaurë breathes from his chest. He is the more mature one and though he concedes Tyelkormo has a point there is no reason to discuss it, now—they had not lifted swords. Their father’s paranoia bears the blame for this. 

Not one of them had interrupted their father save Maitimo, for his love of Findekáno. He longs for the strings. Even the best of them had managed to believe in only one of their cousins, and no one else had managed at all. Their father will not crawl back to the Valar and in this, if nothing else, they had agreed with him. 

'They will not return,' Tyelkormo says, his face pale. He is breathing quickly, the way one does when running far distances. ‘I would not. We left, and now we bear the consequences of our leaving and so do they.'

Makalaurë carefully does not voice the names of the responsible parties in certain choices, but the awareness of it sneaks up on him regardless. He also has no desire to know what his brother, prone to wandering along the coastlines in search for game and the ability to speak to those that traverse the sea, thinks he knows of their family’s course of action. 

'The Valar were unjust to us first,' he says instead, and he knows this to be true. 

Tyelkormo finally curses, a long and awful stream of self-loathing and anger, and leaps up, punching both his clenched fists into the tree he sat against. Makalaurë purposely relaxes his own arms.

Tyelko presses his forehead into the bark, his back shaking. Blood drips from his fingers and down his arms. Makalaurë looks around for Huan, but he is nowhere to be seen. Then he looks back at his brother's head, only now realizing how unkempt it his, the silver braids crowning him loose and knotty as if he has not redone them in some time. Daunted, he rises to his feet and steps up to his brother.

Tyelko breathes through his nose, trying to ignore the yearning for furs against his skin, still left mostly bare for pride and for sensation, for a devotion he has no more right to. Laurë's light footsteps are loud in his ears as they approach him slowly. Cautious Laurë. If it had been Curvo he would have already heard half a lecture on galvanization and not have to suffer this—humiliation.

The small hiss of a tree-snake settles in his gut like a stone for the eyes on him, for the words they expect of him, for this skill of his and the one who taught him to use and control it. He does not delight in hearing their words at times though at other times they comfort him. Still he has heard of Kementári’s fear of destruction and he himself has wondered if the Lady’s pronouncement had been one of fear or foresight. The tree-snake cares not for his pain or for his doubts; every creature is opportunistic, and snakes in particular value a bargain. 

He wishes their eyes would turn away from him and wishes for another pair of eyes to replace them, too.

He presses his knuckles into the tree so hard he sees stars. 

Tyelkormo Turcafinwë longs for words he cannot understand. His brother's calloused hands smooth soothingly across his back. 

‘I’m sorry,’ says Tyelko after some time. ‘I cannot forswear my love for—’ Makalaurë hums. ‘Indeed,’ he says. He runs his hands over his brother’s shoulder blades in circles that ebb in size until they focus on the knots nearest to his spine, hard and set. 

‘I suppose I as well ought to apologize for my lack of understanding,’ he says idly. Tyelko snorts, but not in bitterness, but as one who had no expectations of their brother to respond elsehow. He pushes off from the tree, Makalaurë letting his hands fall off from his back and stepping away to give him space.

His brother makes no attempt to wipe away the tears streaking his cheeks nor the redness of his cheeks, and so Makalaurë does not call attention to them either. The familiarity of the exchange settles them both.

‘I think I should prefer to stay awhile longer in these woods,’ he says, purposely casual to gauge his brother’s spirit. ‘Would my younger brother care to keep me company and protect me from any fell creatures that may linger near after-dark?’ 

Tyelko snorts again, louder, as Huan trots up and leans into his thigh, and says ‘You are a fairer hand with a sword than I, frail brother of mine, and these are no woods. Yet I thank you for your offer and I will take you up on it.’ He says the last sentence in a close imitation of Makalaurë’s love, who had oft spoken in jest in this way, clearly making a close impression on ever-listening Tyelko.

Makalaurë takes the imitation for the grateful rebuke it is, and gestures for his brother to join him, folding himself down onto the tree trunk Tyelkormo had treated so unkindly a few hours prior. 

It is wide enough to seat them both, even with Tyelko’s long limbs, so long as Huan counterbalances him by lying on his feet as he does. Tyelko makes a soundless noise of content and pushes into his personal space, eager for the contact now he is the one to initiate it and no longer feels overly vulnerable.

Tyelkormo falls asleep shortly after, worn out by the strength and volatility of his own emotions, but Makalaurë remains awake. He will tell himself it was for the reason of not wishing to miss the evening meal, nor indeed the evening song—he has not yet tired of his new instrument by any means, and he will not heed any tiring of his songs either—or that he is not tired but the simple truth is that he has no wish, tonight, to face the dreams he knows will come. 

Makalaurë holds his younger brothers head in his lap and tilts his head back, parts his lips and wishes for soundless song, or else song that will ring so far as to reach through the fabric of Song to the ears of the Valar. He wishes for a song of Them as he has not heard one in all his years under the trees and after; of their cruelty not to each other, of the damage of their lack of understanding and of the damage of their understanding, too.

Tyelkormo will have no longer joy of woodland tents or of battle-horns, not the calmness of his face amidst his bristling energy after a hunt.

He curses the Valar for their history of abandonments and favouritism, for their willingness to dispense punishment too late and then too strongly. Tyelko shifts in his arms, muttering in his sleep. 

Huan lets out a light bark, disturbing a moth that had been about to alight on his nose. 

The proof of a Vala’s kindness lies in front of his eyes and yet it seems more of a selfishness to Makalaurë; a cruel remainder of what Tyelko could have were circumstances different. A welcome one, perhaps, but cruel still. No Vala had spoken for them, no Vala had called out the treachery of their own. He hums a discordant interval. 

His brother had never spoken of the Hunt to him for they had not been close, yet Makalaurë had noticed the heavy golden band on his forearm and the new alertness in his ever-aware eyes. Makalaurë is a harpist and he looks for the logic of stories. What he finds in this one is a promise broken, and not by his rash brother’s loyalty to their family. 

He looks down at Tyelko and sings a song of happy dreams, imagining his fingers on the bell-racks his grandfather had kept in his palace, where he first heard this song in his mind’s ear. And he sings and he holds his brother and his brother’s dog and he hopes— _hopes_ —that like the promise between his brother and his god this oath will be a thing not of pure evil even if it turns painful in the end. 

And yet, he feels like the end has already been surpassed and the story spun out past what he can conceive of.

***

In his sleep, Tyelko feels the hands of the Vala of Spring undo his braids and comb his hair slowly, parting it into twin braids and pinning them up to the back of his head with some kind of clasp. 

His Lord’s wife had wandered in the forests with them, at times, not one for hunting but one to appreciate the force of life and blood and laughter. He knows her by the smell of flowers and newness that surrounds her, by the fresh strength that fills his heart. She sings to him as she combs, of chaos and of blood and of death and of the changes that follow but it does not hearten him. 

She finishes with his hair and he feels her bend closer to his ear. ‘Restless One,’ she says softly, her voice lower in timbre than her husband’s. ‘Do not fear your Lord’s ire. My Husband loves for the sake of wildness, and though none may know the future there can be no flaw in such love, only potential.’ 

_But it won’t be enough to save you or yours from your actions._ She does not have to say it for him to know it, and he does not say it either, raising from her lap despite his unease at her presence, bowing deeply as he has been taught. She watches him. He cannot read her face. Her dark robe swishes around her feet as she walks, and crocuses spring up amidst her steps. 

She pauses at the edge of the round earthen hall in which he is standing still, but says nothing in the end, walking out. Spring is a season of death as it is one of renewal and though Tyelkormo can not understand her care for him in this he knows better than to reject it or to read in it a forgiveness she has not, and likely will not offer; her words as much warning as reassurance. 

He sinks down onto one knee as he did when he prayed and presses deeper into his bruises. With a start he notices his bangle is back on his arm, the embossing well-polished and visible even in the din light of his dreamscape. He thinks of little as he presses into them, as much prayer as memory, as much punishment as yearning. 

His ears are buzzing despite the quiet in this space—though he finds noises at times overwhelming, he has the instincts of a hunter (of an animal) who dictate that silence means danger. 

He kneels in wait for some time, uncertain if he should be waiting, only knowing that he is, and for something. For a break, maybe. For Aldaron rescinding his gifts, relieving him of his status, nay-saying their past—he grits his teeth—companionship. For a confirmation, any kind, of what the Lady told him.

Nothing comes. He is himself; he will remain as such. Nothing will stop him and the love for his Lord will stall him only for so long against the ambition of his father and his brothers, against his own desire for movement, for venting his feelings. He knows. He cannot turn back from himself now, he cannot flinch. The least he can do is accept that he is, here, now, forsaken of his goodness, and try to preserve that of their people as much as possible. 

Surely the Valar will have mercy on some of them even should they have none to spare for him. He pulls the clasp from his hair and looks at it; the web of braids falls limply over his shoulders. It is the insignia of Aldaron, a horn backed by antlers.

He will be torn apart by two oaths, then, for he cannot abandon either of them and they will fit together like a fist fits an eye. His smile is a snarl. He tucks the clasp under his tongue, closes his eyes, and waits for the waking to come. 

When he wakes to Makalaurë’s shaking, it is with a new set of braids and no memory of what he had dreamed. Dinner that night consists of roots and dry fruits stuffed inside one of the horses he had tamed at his father’s requests when they had first reached the shore—it had broken a leg as they lead it further away from the territory it was used to and they just could not afford to let it die a slow death. Oil drips from Makalaurë’s mouth onto the chains on his hand; this close to the fire, they seem to catch flame. 

Tyelko turns his eyes away and leans his weight fully into Curvo, who hisses like an angry cat but lets him stay there until they each retire to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Some things:
> 
> 1\. this is extremely self-indulgent so if you made it here wow, hi!! thanks for reading!  
> 2\. the title of this is from Talos, 'the light was upon us'  
> 3\. harps being associated with war is a real thing; i got it from scottish history.  
> 4\. i have however never heard of anyone tuning harps w just their hands  
> 5\. i do not understand the chronology of anything in the silmarillion and i refuse to start now
> 
> Lastly, tyelko being good at voice imitation is someone else's hc but i can't find the post now. the idea that part of the reason for his later atrocities stems from a kind of hopeless/bitter acceptance of the horror that is the oath i picked up from https://farewell-fair-cruelty.tumblr.com/post/631890447509422080/some-thoughts-on-my-favorite-murder-boi-aka-i-sat and https://actualelffucker.tumblr.com/post/171705235165/some-meta-about-those-disaster-boys-the.


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